How to block ad tracking on your iPhone

In 2019, A. Article in Washington Post Geoffrey Fowler described the author’s shock when he found out how many of his iPhone apps were collecting and uploading information about his use at bedtime.

As we all know by now, data is a big item these days. If you use a phone, laptop, or any type of computing device (unless you’re a security expert or a high-level hacker with sophisticated blocking tools), you’ll be able to contribute marketing and other information to your apps. Are paying for Companies that supply them.

As shown in Fowler’s article, iPhone users are not immune to it. Since their article was published, Apple has made some commendable changes to its privacy policies. But it is still a good idea to take charge of your own data. There are some simple ways to reduce the amount of tracking that app vendors do and access as much data as they can.

Turn off personal and location-based advertising

According to apple Advertisement and Privacy Page:

Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our app to user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, and from data brokers Does not share data with user or device.

However, the page states that relevant data, such as information about your device, its location, your App Store, and information you read on Apple News, can be collected. You can get around this to some extent Turn off personal and location-based advertising.

To turn off personalized ads

• Choose your “Settings” app, tap on “Privacy” and scroll down and select “Apple Ads” (it will be near the bottom of the list).
• Toggle “Personalized Ads”.

To turn off location-based advertising

• Select “Settings”> “Privacy”> “Location Services” (at the top of the display).
• Toggle “Location Services”.

On this page, you can change many of your applications, such as the App Store or Maps, never allow access to the location, ask for the next time, or while using the app. Also, note that you can still use the “Find My Phone” feature; This will temporarily enable location services.

If you want to see how effectively your phone is protected, you can try taking Panoptic test, Introduced by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It monitors device fingerprinting, among other things. After following the above instructions I ran it on the Apple iPhone 11, and I got the “partial protection” result to prevent tracking ads, block invisible trackers, and protect against fingerprinting.

Safari Closed

If you use the Safari browser on your iPhone, there are several things you can do to make it safe.

• go to Settings.”
• Select “Safari” and scroll to the “Privacy and Security” section.
• Turn “Stop cross-site tracking” (which means advertisers and other third-party content providers can’t track you from one site to another).
• Turn “Block All Cookies” on. Cookies collected by various websites may contain a lot of information about how you use the site, what information you keep in it, etc. By blocking cookies, you prevent that data from being collected.

However, you will probably make things very inconvenient for yourself. Visits to your sites will not be recorded, so, for example, you may not be able to reissue a playlist or repurchase the same T-shirt you purchased last year. Some sites will also deny entry if you do not allow them to collect cookies. it’s your choice.

Close background app refresh

According to appleThe reason for refreshing background apps is to allow suspended apps (apps that are not currently active) to “check for updates and new content”. According to Discoct, the privacy app company Geoffrey Fowler cites in his article, it allows apps to collect marketable tracking data and transmit that data when you’re not using the app. The interesting thing is that the iPhone app with background app refresh started running, but it is not very difficult to turn it off.

• go to Settings.”
• Select “General”
• Select “Background App Refresh”.
• You will see a list of all the apps that use this feature, and they are all about to be turned on. Find “Background App Refresh” at the top of the page, and tap on it.
• You will be brought to a page, which enables you to have only Wi-Fi, for Wi-Fi and cellular data, or you can turn it on completely. Select “off”
• If you go back to the previous page, you will see that all the toggles of the various apps are completely gone.

You can choose which apps can work in the background. Some apps may not work properly. For example, Google Photos will not automatically backup your camera roll unless this feature is enabled. So, if you want, you can skip “Background App Refresh”, and then choose which specific app you want to close.

Updates March 8, 2021, 5:00 pm: This article was originally published on May 30, 2018; Several parts have been updated to reflect changes in iOS.